Happy holidays from ArenaNet: Looking Ahead to the New Year!

Fire Attunement.9835 · December 20, 2019

As we sign off for our annual holiday break, we’re wishing you and yours a splendid season. In 2019, you brought down Kralkatorrik, defeated Qadim the Peerless, attended the biggest charr party ever as a guest of honor, and faced treachery in the Far Shiverpeaks. You’ve befriended skyscales, bonded with Raven, tackled four Strike Missions, and kicked back at festivals throughout the year.

Now it’s time to rest, relax, and look forward to what comes next! Before we head home to spend time with our families, we wanted to give members of the Guild Wars 2 team an opportunity to talk about these updates in their own words. Read more here!

Randulf.7614 · December 20, 2019

Visions of the Past sounds interesting (as long as retain our skills - don't want that big backlash again)

Nice Drakkar teaser in the vid too

Any news on new raids/fractals for that side of the community? They are important too

Have a good hols!

Inculpatus cedo.9234 · December 20, 2019

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes to the entire ArenaNet Team.Looking forward to the New Year and promising new content with you all. :star:

Blocki.4931 · December 20, 2019

Neat little roadmap. Also helps that Q1 really isn't that far off :) Exciting stuff, hope it can meet expectations.Happy Holidays everyone!

Adzekul.3104 · December 20, 2019

Very happy to see this post. Communication about plans is a good thing. Let's all be responsible and treat this post constructively.

I do not want to make trouble, or start a tangential debate, but I am curious about why WvW Alliances and sPvP Swiss are not coming at similar times. I was under the understanding that both had suffered from delays for rather similar "missing features / code" (if I can say it that way). Could it be that sPvP beta is also the beta test for Alliances, assuming that coding algorithms are similar? Happy to discuss this outside of this thread.

In my opinion, I see no need for further changes to Warclaw (this is not an invitation to debate it in this thread). This is becoming a never-ending-project for you guys. I play scourge. I do not want to be ganked by every single other player in WvW. Lance was not a happy addition to the game and it seems like a load of resources and coding will be necessary to give scourge the non-zerg survivability they need to handle the changes you are discussing here. Happy to discuss this outside of this thread.

zealex.9410 · December 20, 2019

Nice bit of info to see but is the 1 ep per quarter indicative of all future quarters? doesnt q1 consist of Jan Feb and March? Ep1 in jan, lunar festival likely in feb and what does that leave us for march?

Randulf.7614 · December 20, 2019

@zealex.9410 said:Nice bit of info to see but is the 1 ep per quarter indicative of all future quarters? doesnt q1 consist of Jan Feb and March? Ep1 in jan, lunar festival likely in feb and what does that leave us for march?

Given ep2 launches right at the end of Jan, I'd expect ep3 to hit somewhere after SAB in April anyway. Which about 2.5 months between releases

If memory serves, they said Drakkar wont release with the episode, but shortly after. So that would prob be Feb if correct

zealex.9410 · December 20, 2019

@Randulf.7614 said:
@zealex.9410 said:Nice bit of info to see but is the 1 ep per quarter indicative of all future quarters? doesnt q1 consist of Jan Feb and March? Ep1 in jan, lunar festival likely in feb and what does that leave us for march?

Given ep2 launches right at the end of Jan, I'd expect ep3 to hit somewhere after SAB in April anyway. Which about 2.5 months between releases

If memory serves, they said Drakkar wont release with the episode, but shortly after. So that would prob be Feb if correct

I guess all depends on the quality and quantity of the visions update, im personally a fan of smaller but more frequent updates since anet cant really nail big updades and their replayability but ep1 was too small story wise even for me.

Id rather they try and stick to this 2 month schedule tho we'll have to w8 and see. Super bummed about the lack of fractal and raid news honestly, strikes are cool but where is the incentive for ppl to move further.

All of all im happy we are seeing the first steps of a roadmap but this q looks relatively weak imo, still it must have taken alot of internal discussion within anet to actual give us deadlines for once.

Blocki.4931 · December 20, 2019

@"Adzekul.3104" said:Very happy to see this post. Communication about plans is a good thing. Let's all be responsible and treat this post constructively.
I do not want to make trouble, or start a tangential debate, but I am curious about why WvW Alliances and sPvP Swiss are not coming at similar times. I was under the understanding that both had suffered from delays for rather similar "missing features / code" (if I can say it that way). Could it be that sPvP beta is also the beta test for Alliances, assuming that coding algorithms are similar? Happy to discuss this outside of this thread.
In my opinion, I see no need for further changes to Warclaw (this is not an invitation to debate it in this thread). This is becoming a never-ending-project for you guys. I play scourge. I do not want to be ganked by every single other player in WvW. Lance was not a happy addition to the game and it seems like a load of resources and coding will be necessary to give scourge the non-zerg survivability they need to handle the changes you are discussing here. Happy to discuss this outside of this thread.

Alliances is a much bigger system than Swiss, but they've said that a lot of the code of Swiss can and will be used for the Alliances as well. So they're making sure it works.

Randulf.7614 · December 20, 2019

@zealex.9410 said:
@Randulf.7614 said:
@zealex.9410 said:Nice bit of info to see but is the 1 ep per quarter indicative of all future quarters? doesnt q1 consist of Jan Feb and March? Ep1 in jan, lunar festival likely in feb and what does that leave us for march?

Given ep2 launches right at the end of Jan, I'd expect ep3 to hit somewhere after SAB in April anyway. Which about 2.5 months between releases

If memory serves, they said Drakkar wont release with the episode, but shortly after. So that would prob be Feb if correct

I guess all depends on the quality and quantity of the visions update, im personally a fan of smaller but more frequent updates since anet cant really nail big updades and their replayability but ep1 was too small story wise even for me.

Id rather they try and stick to this 2 month schedule tho we'll have to w8 and see. Super bummed about the lack of fractal and raid news honestly, strikes are cool but where is the incentive for ppl to move further.

All of all im happy we are seeing the first steps of a roadmap but this q looks relatively weak imo, still it must have taken alot of internal discussion within anet to actual give us deadlines for once.

Well any communication is better than none. And this is a lot better than anything else we got, but yes I feel sorry for the instanced players who have nothing to latch onto here. I will take what they serve here though - it is something

Ep2 will likely be very short again. I suspect Drakkar is going to be a significant boss which means a lot of resources devoted to it. Which is good - we really need a proper epic scale World Boss. We haven't really had one for a long, long time now. Not since HoT really and Gerent/Dragonstand. But, another miniscule story entry is not something that I will be happy to see.

Castiel.9048 · December 20, 2019

I find it humorous that Warclaw Balance is the only item under WvW, when there are so many more impactful issues to address.Seriously? There are no other issues seen for WvW at this time to address?The weaver skill bug better be fixed within this Warclaw Balance release if this is so pressing.

Happy Holidays.

LucianDK.8615 · December 20, 2019

@Randulf.7614 said:
@zealex.9410 said:
@Randulf.7614 said:
@zealex.9410 said:Nice bit of info to see but is the 1 ep per quarter indicative of all future quarters? doesnt q1 consist of Jan Feb and March? Ep1 in jan, lunar festival likely in feb and what does that leave us for march?

Given ep2 launches right at the end of Jan, I'd expect ep3 to hit somewhere after SAB in April anyway. Which about 2.5 months between releases

If memory serves, they said Drakkar wont release with the episode, but shortly after. So that would prob be Feb if correct

I guess all depends on the quality and quantity of the visions update, im personally a fan of smaller but more frequent updates since anet cant really nail big updades and their replayability but ep1 was too small story wise even for me.

Id rather they try and stick to this 2 month schedule tho we'll have to w8 and see. Super bummed about the lack of fractal and raid news honestly, strikes are cool but where is the incentive for ppl to move further.

All of all im happy we are seeing the first steps of a roadmap but this q looks relatively weak imo, still it must have taken alot of internal discussion within anet to actual give us deadlines for once.

Well any communication is better than none. And this is a lot better than anything else we got, but yes I feel sorry for the instanced players who have nothing to latch onto here. I will take what they serve here though - it is something

Ep2 will likely be very short again. I suspect Drakkar is going to be a significant boss which means a lot of resources devoted to it. Which is good - we really need a proper epic scale World Boss. We haven't really had one for a long, long time now. Not since HoT really and Gerent/Dragonstand. But, another miniscule story entry is not something that I will be happy to see.

Episode 2 will be the other half of Bjora marches.And Visions of the past? Perhaps its ls1 bought back.

Blocki.4931 · December 20, 2019

@Randulf.7614 said:
@zealex.9410 said:
@Randulf.7614 said:
@zealex.9410 said:Nice bit of info to see but is the 1 ep per quarter indicative of all future quarters? doesnt q1 consist of Jan Feb and March? Ep1 in jan, lunar festival likely in feb and what does that leave us for march?

Given ep2 launches right at the end of Jan, I'd expect ep3 to hit somewhere after SAB in April anyway. Which about 2.5 months between releases

If memory serves, they said Drakkar wont release with the episode, but shortly after. So that would prob be Feb if correct

I guess all depends on the quality and quantity of the visions update, im personally a fan of smaller but more frequent updates since anet cant really nail big updades and their replayability but ep1 was too small story wise even for me.

Id rather they try and stick to this 2 month schedule tho we'll have to w8 and see. Super bummed about the lack of fractal and raid news honestly, strikes are cool but where is the incentive for ppl to move further.

All of all im happy we are seeing the first steps of a roadmap but this q looks relatively weak imo, still it must have taken alot of internal discussion within anet to actual give us deadlines for once.

Well any communication is better than none. And this is a lot better than anything else we got, but yes I feel sorry for the instanced players who have nothing to latch onto here. I will take what they serve here though - it is something

Ep2 will likely be very short again. I suspect Drakkar is going to be a significant boss which means a lot of resources devoted to it. Which is good - we really need a proper epic scale World Boss. We haven't really had one for a long, long time now. Not since HoT really and Gerent/Dragonstand. But, another miniscule story entry is not something that I will be happy to see.

I hope so too, but I still think smaller & faster releases are better. Ideally the map would hold it together and offer enough value in the meantime imo

Randulf.7614 · December 20, 2019

@LucianDK.8615 said:
@Randulf.7614 said:
@zealex.9410 said:
@Randulf.7614 said:
@zealex.9410 said:Nice bit of info to see but is the 1 ep per quarter indicative of all future quarters? doesnt q1 consist of Jan Feb and March? Ep1 in jan, lunar festival likely in feb and what does that leave us for march?